Hope In Iran

Revolutions start in the oddest places and over the oddest things. A monopolistic company tries to muscle people over tea. Vaclav Havel loves The Beatles. Young Russians develop a taste for Western clothing and rock and roll. The only places in the world where there is still Communism today are the places where we actually made real, hot war against it. We left the rest of the Soviet bloc to blue jeans and the White Album and it all fell apart at once.

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But viewers in Iran found themselves rubbing their eyes in disbelief when the morning programme broadcast the musicians playing traditional Persian instruments, because for many it was the first time they had seen such instruments on national television. Although the Islamic republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) tolerates non-western music - albeit to an extent - and singers are regular guests there, musical instruments have been banned on state TV for more than three decades. But on Saturday Avaye Parsian (Persian voice), led by musician Saman Alipour, were filmed in the studio of the Good Morning Iran show for IRIB's Channel 1 playing santoor, a trapezoid-shaped Persian dulcimer played by wooden hammers, tar (Iranian lute) and kamancheh, a bowed string instrument.

(First of all, how cool is it that there's a show called Good Morning Iran?)

Astonished viewers quickly took pictures of their television screens with their cellphones when they saw Alipour's band, who had been invited to perform in celebration of Prophet Muhammad's birthday the next day. "Am I dreaming or what?" tweeted one Iranian, posting an image he took from his screen. On Monday the reformist Shargh daily published the image, which by then had circulated all over the internet among Iranian users, on its front page...Iranian users on Facebook and Twitter welcomed the ground-breaking incident and shared images they captured of the performance. Saturday's incident strengthened hopes among many that it would mean a long-standing ban was about to expire as president Hassan Rouhani opens up to the world and relaxes social restrictions at home.

The producers are backing and filling now, but that's because they're producers and, therefore, by definition, more than half chickenshit about people in power. But this is the kind of thing that we should be celebrating. These are the kind of people we should be celebrating. This is because the people of whom the producers are frightened know full well that this is the kind of thing of which you cannot control the spread. Given the slightest glimpse of daylight, on any front, and freedom will try to break through it everywhere.

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But, here's the thing. You do not encourage this, and you certainly do not celebrate it, by blowing the hell out of another part of the country, or by tightening sanctions that already are biting hard at the wrong people. Suppose the santoor player has a beloved uncle who sells dates outside of Qom. One day, an American bomb blows him to hell and gone. What do you suppose that does to the santoor player's opinion of the West? How do you suppose it changes the nature of his relationship to the present regime? Suppose his bandmates have children who are ill, or who are hungry. Maybe the kamancheh player's daughter dies, and the regime can point to the Senate of the United States for the reasons why. Where does the kamancheh player stand then? The kamancheh player is the real hope, not the quibbling of diplomats, the voices in John McCain's head, or the United States Air Force.

These people are worth our support. They are certainly worth our support more than the collection of neocon fantasts, timid Democrats, Green Room bombardiers, and Bibi Netanyahu that is spoiling for a war that the American people do not want. Me? I stand with the people who play the music. Plato may not have been entirely right; if the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city do not necessarily shake, but, at the very least, the people should have something to whistle when they set about tearing them down.

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